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He had a frighteningly good point there. The college was currently locked with only students and staff inside, and Royersford was guarded with soldiers. And if you were to count the snow that made long-distance travel difficult on top of that, we were stuck in yet another way.
I didn’t ask him to come with me, but Appius got up from the table and trailed me into my bedroom. Without a word, he helped me to shove the mattress that the soldiers had upended back onto the bed—which involved restuffing it, since they’d slit it open and pulled half the stuffing out, as if checking to see whether I was hiding anything there. He then sewed up the mattress using supplies I’d brought home weeks ago to practice sutures while I folded my clothes and put them back into the bureau.
“Are you really going to try to go back over the mountains in the spring?” Appius asked in a subdued voice as we worked.
“I am,” I said, without hesitation or doubt.
Appius fiddled with the mattress for another few seconds, then asked, “Alone?”
I glanced over my shoulder, an uneasy feeling building within me. “Most likely,” I said.
“Like I said before, I’ve been climbing a lot. You should never go alone.” Appius said.
I could feel his worry, so I turned fully to him and said, “Probably not. But I’m also less likely to be stopped and dragged back to Royersford if I go alone.”
Appius looked at me like I was mad. “But what if something happens? What if you get lost, or if you fall and get hurt?”
I grinned in spite of the seriousness of the conversation. “I’ve had the finest medical training available. I’m certain I could fix myself up.”
Appius frowned, evidently not appreciating my humor. “What if you get stuck and need someone to pull you out of something? Or…or if there’s some sort of wild animal, or soldiers to contend with?”
I blew out a breath, rubbing my hands over my face. I had the feeling Appius was working his way around to asking to go with me. Which was insane, considering we’d only formed the connection we had now the night before. True, we’d known each other and been friends on a level for a few weeks now, but that still wasn’t time enough to ask to cross mountains with someone.
Although that thought brought others with it. I had known Leander and Darius, Lucius and Mara for months now. We’d been thrown together into a sort of loose family, but it was more of a connection than anything I had with anyone else in the Old Realm. Leander and Darius weren’t close with their family, and it could be argued that their attachment to each other would be more accepted in the frontier. And if my suspicions about Lucius’s involvement in the revolution, or Mara’s, for that matter, were true, they might be up for starting a new life out of King Julius’s reach.
I made up my mind to address the issue up front instead of letting it go.
“Appius, are you implying that you want to climb and cross the mountains with me in the spring?” I asked, staring at him with just a bit of disapproval to maybe discourage him from madness.
Appius glanced down, picking at the loose threads of the slashed mattress fabric. “I don’t know,” he said, sounding surprisingly genuine. Still looking down, he said, “I have a feeling things are going to get bad in the kingdom. My family has never been particularly enthusiastic about King Julius. My da believes he murdered his way to the throne, and I….”
He looked up, appearing older than his years for a change.
“It all depends on what happens to my family through the rest of the winter,” he said. “Aktau is on the way to the mountain pass, so one way or another, when you leave Royersford, I want to come with you. I want to go home…to see if I have any home left to go to. I…I haven’t had any letters from them since that first one, when I first arrived a month ago.” He looked down again.
I wanted to tell him that a month was no time at all, particularly once the snows had started, but I knew better. I still perked up every time mail was delivered to the college, even though I knew it was impossible that there would be anything from Dushka for me.
“Let’s see what happens in the next few months,” I told him, going back to my task of putting things away. “I don’t think this whole thing with the king and the revolution will blow over, but it might get…easier?”
Even as I said that, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I’d already lived through the downfall of one kingdom, and I knew how desperate things going get. I didn’t particularly fancy being on the side of the refugees this time around, but at least I knew what to expect.
Beyond that, I knew what sort of adjustments to my planning I would need if I was going to bring people with me out of the Old Realm and into the frontier.
ChapterEleven
Traditionally, the new year began on the day after Solstice. And with the dawn of a new day—after a night spent with Appius in my arms, both of us awake and listening for anything that would indicate we were all about to be killed—it felt like the dawning of a new era for all of us.
Even though nothing ostensibly changed.
A note had been delivered during the night, telling us that everything within the college grounds was to return to normal immediately. The bathhouse was functioning again—which was useful, since I needed a bath after all the sweating I’d done while cleaning—and the dining hall was serving all meals.
So Appius and I joined Leander and Darius in a jaunt to the bathhouse, and then on to the dining hall, where we encountered an anxious and subdued student body in eating what, by all outward appearances, was an ordinary meal. After that, we met up with Mara and Lucius—who had been suspiciously absent in the morning and only just arrived in the dining hall as we were all finishing up—and found Justus and Virgil as well before heading into the main auditorium for the day’s lessons.
“So you’re with Conrad now?” Justus asked, falling into step with Appius as we walked along paths that hadn’t been cleared of the previous day’s snowfall.
“I, um….” Appius glanced to me for what to say to his actual housemates.
“We all need someone to hold us and make us feel safe in the night,” I said, feeling half like a poet and half like a philosopher. And also like an idiot.
